


what's the word.

by katarama



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [26]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, High School, Long-Distance Relationship, Polyamory, Secret Relationship, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 05:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6271921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Allison, don’t write on your hands,” her mother used to say.  “You’ll get ink poisoning.”  Allison was good.  Allison kept her hands neat and clean, was even careful not to get marker on her skin when they colored in class.  </p><p>Her soulmate’s parents must’ve never warned them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what's the word.

“Allison, don’t write on your hands,” her mother used to say.  “You’ll get ink poisoning.”  Allison was good.  Allison kept her hands neat and clean, was even careful not to get marker on her skin when they colored in class.  

Her soulmate’s parents must’ve never warned them.  Allison always had to explain the splashes of color on her arms and legs, her face, a couple of times.  She remembers when the words started, remembers piecing together the backwards and upside-down letters scrambled together on her hand.  She was always proud when she knew what they said, because she was learning, too.  Sometimes she wanted to write back, wanted to take the time to write out h-e-l-l-o, or A-l-l-i-s-o-n on her hands, her i dotted carefully.

“Allison, don’t write on your hands,” her mother chides.

Allison’s soulmate writes on their hands all the time, and doesn’t seem to be dying of ink poisoning, but Allison obeys anyway.

As she gets older, the letters get better, and she realizes that not all of the handwriting is the same.  There are two different styles of letters, one small and compact, the letters careful, the other big and bold and loopy.  The small letter soulmate has a favorite word, one of the few things they ever write, starting out.  

“S-t-i-l-e-s.”  

Sometimes bold, sometimes all capitals, sometimes underlined and with question marks.  Allison looks the word up, because she doesn’t recognize it, but she doesn’t think her soulmate is a farmer.  It doesn’t click until the other person starts writing back, “Scott,” and she realizes that maybe it’s a name.  

It isn’t the only time words show up on her hands that she doesn’t know.  There are pretty-sounding words with accent marks that she has to look up and realizes are Spanish words.  Words like “fuck” sound less pretty, but she doesn’t get to the dictionary on that before her mother scolds her, sends her to the bathroom to wash off ink she didn’t put there.  

“Why did you erase it?” appears immediately afterwards, in the same big, loopy letters, but Allison washes that off, too.

“Why do you always erase what we write?” the writing demands again.

“Sometimes I wish you talked back,” the smaller handwriting says under it.  

Allison waits until she’s tucked safely away in the school building the next day, slips a marker from her backpack into the pocket of her flare jeans.  She gets a hall pass to go to the bathroom and sits in the stall, writes carefully on the bare skin of her hand.  She leaves it there as long as she can, but she has to erase it before she heads back to the classroom.  She hopes her soulmates had the time to see it.  She hopes that it makes things more real for them, her careful letters, the i dotted with a heart.

“A-l-l-i-s-o-n.”

By the time she gets back to class her arms are covered in ink, exclamation points littering her skin, a slew of questions, “Are you a girl?” and “How old are you?” and “Why do you never write us?”  Allison doesn’t respond, and the writing slows, is carefully washed off.  They only leave one thing for her to stare at for the rest of class.

“We want to meet you.  Where do you live?”

“Chicago,” Allison writes in pen, in the smallest letters she can manage.  She finally caves, writes below it, “but we’re moving to San Francisco soon.”

Her letters disappear, replaced by small, even letters, the one Allison thinks is named Scott.

“We’re in California.  Beacon Hills.”

Allison looks up everything she can find about Beacon Hills in her school’s library while she waits for Kate to pick her up to go shopping after school, a quick bonding trip while Kate’s in town.  There’s not much she can find from a quick google.  It’s a small town, not actually too far from San Francisco.

She can’t ask her parents to meet them, because her mom would never say yes.  Kate isn’t her parents, though.  Kate’s much cooler.

“We’ll see,” Kate tells her, when she asks in the car.  “Maybe we can make it our little secret.”

But Allison doesn’t see Kate much when they move.  Kate only ever visits them in the places they stay more than a year or two, because she’s off being busy now that she’s an adult.  

Allison gives up hope for a little while of meeting them.  Sometimes she still writes to them on her hands, but she’s much more careful, even though she has a packet of wet wipes she carries around with her now, just in case.  But Allison gets her first phone, a go phone with a 200-text per month plan.  Allison uses it sometimes to text her friends from her old school, or her friends from her new school, but she budgets her texts carefully.  She scrawls her new phone number on her hand for Scott and Stiles to see and gets texts from both of them immediately after.  Allison knows she should be careful, because her mom could easily snoop on her phone if she wanted.  Allison’s mother doesn’t seem too worried about her, though, because Allison never texts at the dinner table and Allison never goes over her texting limit.  It’s nice, because she can talk to them without worrying, can actually get to know what their messages mean.

“We’re moving at the end of this year,” Allison texts, using up two messages for her one text to make sure it goes to both of their phones.

“To where?” shows up on her hand, and she smiles when she writes.

“Beacon Hills.”

* * *

 

“Class, we have a new student, Allison Argent,” the teacher says.  Allison’s new homeroom teacher at Allison’s new school in Allison’s new city ushers her to a seat near the back of the room, the empty desk behind a boy with warm brown eyes and curly brown hair.  Allison sits down and fishes around for a pen and realizes she doesn’t have one, for once.

“Here,” the boy in front of her says, turning around and holding out a black ballpoint to her.  “I’m Scott,” he says, and Allison’s heart beats fast in her chest. 

“Allison,” she says, even though he already knows.  She can feel herself holding her breath, because she and Scott and Stiles talked classes the night before, and there are only so many Scotts there can be in one single homeroom.  “Are you…?”

The boy in front of her turns back to the board, but the boy sitting next to him picks up a green pen from his desk and writes on a sheet of looseleaf, sliding it to her almost seamlessly.  She unfolds it and sees big, looping handwriting so familiar she knows it almost better than her own.

“I’m Stiles, and he’s Scott, and we’re sneaking out of study hall third period, if you wanna join us.”

Allison uncaps Scott’s pen and writes on her hand so they both can see.

“I’m in.  What’s the plan?”

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).


End file.
